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Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Col’s Week in Review with Ryan cow Callahan. Here’s cal as important as they are to attend. No one has ever accused of Fish and Wildlife Meeting of being entertaining, but there’s a first time for everything, and thanks to listener David Jacobs, I’m here to bring you one of the most memorable moments from a recent gathering of the Washington State Fish and Wildlife commission.
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Speaker 2: My name is John Martin. I’m from Mount Lake Terrace.
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Speaker 1: John explains to the commissioners that he’s wearing a button that says I speak for Washington Wildlife, as he proceeds to demonstrate that’s exactly what he’s there to do.
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Speaker 2: Are you ready wackaacka Those are the ducks. They couldn’t be here today because they’re playing football in Oregon. Have to stand up for this one raw as a bear. The bears couldn’t be here today because they’re playing football in Chicago. That’s supposed to be a whale. You know how people have earthquake fills, Well, the whales couldn’t be here because they’re having a ferry and powerboat drill lots of fish has to be here, lots and lots of fish. But instead I’m going to ask you their request. They request that next time you hold this meeting, please hold it under water.
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Speaker 1: Mister Martin explains that the Wildlife Commissioners are there to represent animals, not the people of Washington State.
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Speaker 2: You don’t represent human beings. You represent those who I tried to speak for. They couldn’t be here today. You don’t represent the governor. You represent wildlife. And the question I have to ask you is what would wildlife say?
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Speaker 1: Now? I could make a joke here about his animal impressions. It doesn’t sound like he’s ever heard a duck in the wild, much less a whale. I could also argue with his contention that the Fish and Wildlife Commission represents wildlife as if they were voted in by strong turnout from the otters and salmon, but I won’t. I’m actually pretty impressed with old John, not because I agree with him, but because he was willing to stand in public, video recorded meeting and do something so memorable. I don’t recommend imitating John’s tactics or god awful animal calls, but I like his spirit and that’s definitely something we can all learn from. This week, We’ve got cheats, wildlife, crime, wolves, and so much more. But first I’m going to tell you about my week. And my week has been steep climbing tall mountains in the fog, clouds in sleep with my only truly custom rifle I’ve ever ordered, my fifty eight caliber Hawkin. This is a low success, high fun hunt for big bulls. Actually it’s an either sex tag, but I’m trying to maximize it. We’ve been finding the small bulls running with the cows and calves until tonight three mature bulls hanging together high above everyone else. Problem is, the weather is so bad you can’t see them most of the time. In fact, today it was the only day I loaded the rifle, and that was a win. Hiked in the damp, intermittent snow and fog for three hours after the loading, and upon reaching the trailhead after dark, I pulled the trigger and the flint hit the thing that it’s supposed to and she went bang. Big boost to the confidence. Tomorrow, the weather is the worst it’s been in the forecast, but I’ve only got two days to hunt, so we shall suffer up a long drainage in the wet, then up a steep ridge in the wet that will come up from the brush and down from the heavens, and pray for gaps in the clouds long enough to relocate the trio. We’ll wait out the wind until it’s right crawling position, and hope she goes bang again. It’s as simple as that. Well, a few other things have to go right, if I’m being honest, But the important thing here to remember is big, beautiful public lands are the places we get to challenge ourselves. I am more and more thankful for the freedom these places afford than ever before. And trust me, you really think about freedom when you’re packing around the old flint lock. I swear when I bring that hammer back, something deep in my soul whispers, no taxation without representation. Every day out here is precious. Let’s not forget why we have these special places. We demanded it. Let’s keep it up from right now on through the new year. Hoping y’all have a great safe end of fall and a winter hunting season. And selfishly to telling you about a great big mountain bowl I spanked in the snow with a flint lock hawk in fifty eight. Moving on to the cheater’s desk. A tournament angler from PA was caught cheating last week when officials discovered him using a cutout from a kayak to stage his photo entries. Jacob Houseman had entered a kayak fishing tournament in New York back in June. But this wasn’t your typical weekend fishing contest with observers and judges on site. This was a month long tournament in which contestants fished on their own time and submitted photos of the fish they caught. Well, Houseman had a brilliant idea to cheat the system. Instead of fishing from a kayak, which was one of the requirements of this contest, he fished from his motorized bass boat. Then, when he caught a fish he wanted to enter, he used to cut out from a neon green kayak to stage the photo. The cutout still had the seat, along with a couple feet of plastic in front, which is where you’d lay a fish to snap your photo if you were actually paddling a kayak. The plan almost worked, tournament directors accepted. How Elseman’s entry and the small mouth earned him a cool two hundred dollars. But that’s when Houseman started to go wrong. About a month after the tournament ended, he posted a photo of that same fish on Instagram, but this time he was holding it on his boat. Serious anglers are a lot like serious whitetail hunters. They can identify the smallest marks and fin shapes, and it didn’t take long for someone to notice Houseman’s deceit. Further investigation revealed a photo of the fake kayak on Houseman’s boat, and he was forced to give up his winnings. Social media gets a lot of hate from the hunting community, but as regular Call of the Wild listeners know, this isn’t the first time a poacher or cheater has gotten caught thanks to the gram. These people just can’t help themselves. Speaking to people who just can’t help themselves, let’s move on over to the crime desk. A Florida man was arrested back in October for poaching an alligator, but the story and his charges were just announced last week by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Local media reports that game wardens were patrolling the Tate’s Hell Wildlife Management Area in Franklin County when they saw a truck acting suspiciously. I suppose the truck wasn’t acting suspiciously, but they say it’s artificial lights were set up quote in a manner consistent with disclosing the presence of wildlife. A guy who’s spotlighting in Layman’s storms. They kept an eye on the truck and it wasn’t long before it stopped A fellow named Morgan Ryan Bab. The MRB got out, walked over to a water filled ditch and pulled the line. On the other end of that line was an alligator snagged on a hook, and Bab shot the animal with a rifle. The game boards hit the lights on their patrol vehicles while Bab tried to drag the gator back into the ditch and pretend like nothing had happened. But the jig was up. Bab was booked for hunting gaiters without a license or tag and for using an illegal means of take. You can use a hook and line to catch a gator, but you can’t use a metal hook if you’re using raw meat as bait. Bab had baited a steel hook with mullet, and he’d also left the line tied around a tree, which is illegal. What’s more, the only firearm you’re allowed to use to dispatch a gator is a bang stick. A bankstick is a device that allows you to fit a shell or cartridge into a metal cylinder on the end of a pole, which detonates when you slam the stick into whatever you want to dispatch. But Bab used what looks like a twenty two rifle to kill his gator, which added yet another line on his rap sheet. Colorado Parks and Wildlife is looking for the person who shot a Rocky Mountain big horn ram and left it to rot. Game wardens said the half curl ram was found in game Management Unit six p’t eighty one, about two hundred yards from County Road thirty eight FF. It was shot in the guts, but the initial investigation revealed that it likely died not far from where it was shot. Nothing had been harvested from the animal, which suggests to me that it was shot from the road. Someone likely saw it as they were driving, decided to take a pot shot, but didn’t have the nerve to get out of their vehicle and go retrieve the horns or meat. Whoever did it is facing serious comp sequence’s poach and can carry a felony charge in Colorado and result in a lifetime hunting ban and in this case, a whopping one hundred thousand dollars fine. Whoever did this in the hunter so the hunting band isn’t a big deal with that one hundred k is going to hurt. Anyone with information about this incident is encouraged to send an anonymous tip to game dot thief at State dot co dot US. Game dot thief at State dot co dot US. The ram was found November eleven, and officials believe it was shot several days prior to that. Moving on to the wolf desk, the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced last month that it will no longer release a nationwide recovery plan for the gray wolf. Under the Biden administration, the Service said it would develop a plan to identify threats to wolves and protect them nationwide, but the Trump administration says that’s not necessary. They say that wolves should be delisted from the Endangered Species Act, so there’s no need to go through the hassle of proposing and approving a nationwide recovery effort. Gray wolves are currently listed as endangered in forty four states and as threatened in Minnesota, but they have been delisted in an area of the Northern Rocky Mountains covering Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, portions of eastern Washington State, and Oregon, and a small region in northern Utah. In this area, there are as many as twenty seven hundred wolves. Whether you agree with the Biden or Trump administrations depends on how you feel about wolves expanding their current range. Some even people who supported the original reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone and the Northern Rockies, think the current situation is pretty good. The wolf population is strong and thriving in the areas where they live, and we shouldn’t worry too much about making sure they’re protected in the rest of the country. On the other hand, wolves historically covered the vast majority of the continental US. If you’d like to see wildlife in the same area as they lived before European contact, we have a heck of a long way to go. We have to make sure wolves are protect from coast to coast if we want to see that historic vision become a reality. If you think raccoons make a racket in your trash cans are scary at night, wait till the old Lobo comes to visit wherever you follow on this debate, it’s clear that the current administration is planning to push for a delisting. If that happens, it’ll be yet another swing in the carnival ride that is wolf policy in the US. As always, we’re here to keep you up to date, no matter where that ferris wheel takes us, staying at the Wolf Desk. A couple weeks back, we let you know that the US Fish and Wildlife Service had prevented Colorado from importing wolves from Canada for its relocation program, instructing that any incoming wolves would have to come from quote unquote northern Rocky Mountain states, almost all of which have refused to participate in Colorado’s effort. Well, another state has now bowed out. The Washington Fish and Wildlife Service Commission this week voted eight to one against sending wolves to Colorado. The commission justified its refusal by stating that we’la are still listed as endangered in Washington that its own recovery plan remains ongoing. Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission member Lorna Smith said, quote, given that we have our largest recovery area in the state still missing any wolf pairs. Staff has cautioned us against going down that road. Translocation is really really hard on animals. There’s no denying that, and there is a certain expected mortality rate among translocated animals. Smith refers to one of the quote unquote recovery areas that are part of Washington’s wolf plan statewide, Washington has committed to delisting wolves if there are fifteen breeding pairs in the state for at least three years, and in fact, there have been well over that number for several years in a row. However, almost all of these breeding pairs are concentrated in two of the state’s four recovery areas, but the recovery plant stipulates that there must be four breeding pairs in each one of the recovery areas before delisting. If the Washington FWSC had wanted to, they could have agreed to relocate wolves from recovery areas that are well over their objectives, but they declined to do so. The next stop will likely be Oregon, where most of Colorado’s relocated wolves have come from so far, but the picture is also complicated. In Oregon, wolves are listed as federally endangered in the Western two thirds of the state, but in the eastern third wolves have now exceeded their recovery objectives. I can imagine there are certain Eastern Oregonians in ag who would be more than happy to ship off some predators, but will see if the state Department of Fish and Wildlife share those beliefs. And what if Colorado can’t find any wolves this year and violates its legally mandated fifteen wolf per year relocation quota. Staying in Colorado, another charismatic species, has been doing well enough in the centennial state that it has now earned itself a new management category. The CPW said in a statement quote, free ranging bison that naturally enter the state from neighboring jurisdictions will now be made managed as wildlife, especially as a big game species, under Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s authority. As of now, you cannot go hunt a buffalo in Colorado, So if chat GPT tells you that you can do, not believe them, but that will be subject to change starting next year. CPW is currently developing a bison management roster where hunters can enroll and be eligible to be selected at random if management action through hunting becomes necessary. A public application form and drawing system is expected on the CPW website in January. Ladies and gentlemen, you can be one hundred percent sure that the name Ryan Callahan will be on that roster. Your name should be on there too. Of course, I’m not holding my breath that I’ll be doing any gripping grins with a two ton Colorado bohemoth anytime soon. The state currently has no native population of wild bison, and all the animals you might find there are visitors from Utah. Utah has about thirteen hundred wild bison in three separate areas, the Antelope Island Herd in the north central part of the state, the Henry Mountains Heard in the south central, and these animals from the Book Cliffs region further east, which number about four hundred and fifty in growing. Although buffalo are very controversial up north in Montana, the mood about this bison migration has been calm in Colorado, as the Book Cliffs Heard has never been tested positive for brucellosis. Although I get as excited as anyone at the prospect of hunting such an iconic species, Colorado made this new classification largely to have a way to penalize people for killing or capturing wild migrating bison illegally. Before now, you’d be in a legal gray area for those actions. But when this law takes effect on January one, there will be a penalty of between one thousand dollars and one hundred thousand dollars for illegal possession of a wild bison, as well as a possible year in jail and twenty licensed suspension points. But zooming out this bureaucratic decision is outstanding news. In two thousand and twenty five, their healthy growing populations of buffalo on the American landscape. If you went back in time and told people in say, eighteen eighty five, they would have thought you were out of your mind. Quick update to our segment last week covering the nomination of Steve Pierce to become head of the BLM. Pierce’s long held opposition to public lands has now come to light. During the twenty twelve presidential election, Pierce said that he opposed Teddy Roosevelt’s quote big ideas of big forests and big national parks, and that if Mitt Romney were elected, he would quote reverse this trend of public ownership of lance. That same year, Pierce lobbied Congress to sell public land for oil and gas drilling, writing, quote, over ninety percent of this land is located in the Western States, and most of it we do not even need ol Steve’s talking for himself there. I’m sure he can agree with me on that one. In twenty sixteen, as a member of Congress, he co sponsored the Herd Act, which intended to quote provide for the orderly disposal of certain federal lands. That bill died in committee, but as we all know far too well, those ideas never seem to die. He has called for shrinking existing national monuments and placing a limit on the designation and size of future national monuments. Crucially, his opposition to public lands were cited by the Center for Western Priorities as a key reason he lost his race for New Mexico governor to Michelle Luhan Grisham. When are these politicians going to learn that opposition to public lands is also going to lose them a whole bunch of upcoming elections. Pierce’s nomination will now go to the US Senate, but we don’t know exactly when. As I mentioned last episode, former head of BLM, William Perry Penley served in that position without his nomination ever coming to a vote. He was a sitting or acting director or something like that. Gang, it’s no surprise that there’s a lot of folks in key positions in Washington are possibly heading to Washington that live in a bubble. They don’t know or maybe possibly refuse to understand how important these places are to us, the American people. If we don’t stand up for these places, really really stand up for these places, we can lose them. Now, Steve’s previous track record, his previous statements they don’t look good, doesn’t make me think, oh, good deal, on the right track. However, what matters is what he does going forward, if he is nominated, if he does sit or act as the head of the BLM. And I don’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat or what you said in the past, if you do good things in that seat, that’s what matters. Everybody’s capable of this. This guy rough start, bad track record, but we have got to spend time and can vinced these people of that. Hunters again are poised to be the greatest voices for BLM lands. We know the true values of these places that quote unquote have nothing on them quote unquote, would be better served for the American people as sold off or developed. We know these places are putting in a hell of a lot of work for us, and we got to stand up for him. That’s all there is to it. This is where the rubber meets the road. Next up the Terrible tick desk. First known death from the tickborn meat allergy alpha gl syndrome has been reported this month in New Jersey. In September twenty twenty four, a forty seven year old the airline pilot returned home after an afternoon barbecue, and despite feeling well enough to mow the lawn and read a newspaper, he began to suffer severe abdominal distress and was found dead by his son in the family’s bathroom later that evening. The man had no history of other health conditions, and medical examiners cannot determine the cause of death, listing it as quote unexplained on the man’s autopsy report. By chance, the man’s wife discussed the details of the tragedy with a doctor and researcher, Aaron mcpheely. Based on the facts of the case, mcpheeley suspected that an allergic reaction may have been the cause, and she’d contacted her colleague, Thomas Platt’s Mills, the University of Virginia allergist who discovered the link between AGS alpha gal syndrome and lone star tick bites in two thousand and two. Plat Mills called for an analysis of a blood sample from the deceased pilot and discovered an extremely high level of the enzyme trip tase, evidence of severe anaphylactic shock. He told NBC News Quote. The level he had is basically only seen in fatal cases of anaphylaxis. His level was two thousand. The highest level I have seen in practice of a person who survived is one hundred. The same analysis also discovered the presence of antibodies to the alpha gal carbohydrate, providing further evidence that the tick borne illness was the cause of death, likely brought on by a hamburger the man had been eaten at the barbecue that day. The man’s family confirmed that he had suffered from a similar adverse reaction to eating a steak two weeks before the fatal incident, probing further for the cause of the infection. Researchers learned that in the summer of twenty twenty three, the man had suffered welts along his ankles that the family had attributed to jiggers, but were more likely bites from lone star tick larvae. In the study that mcpheeley and plat Mills published in the journal Allergy and Clinical Immunology, they emphasized how few doctors know what AGS even is. According to the CDC, forty two percent of doctors had never heard of AGS, and another thirty five percent didn’t have confidence that they could diagnose it or treat people suffering from the condition. This creates a real danger of people being infected and not knowing it. Referring to the New Jersey case, plat Mill said, quote, the tragedy is the doctors didn’t think of that episode as anaphal axis and therefore didn’t connect it to the beef at the time. The implications for hunters are clear. First, we are more likely than anyone to be in areas with ticks and to be hands on with their most common hosts, the white tailed deer. We also have a lot to lose if we can’t eat red meat anymore. That means you should be applying the tick repellent permethron to all your hunting clothes and boots, and always have a loved one or at least someone who’s okay seeing you in your birthday suit conduct a tick check on you when your return from the field. News like this should also prompt hunters in cities to seek out opportunities in suburban and semi rural places where deer populations are overwhelming local residents. One source cited by the University of Virginia study called deer in New Jersey a quote unsustainable statewide emergency. If you live in an apartment in New York City, DC, Atlanta, Houston, or many other parts of the country without a ton of public land around you, conquer your shyness. Call up your aunt who lives in a nearby subdivision. Find out if she or her friends are tired of having their landscaping eaten to the ground. It might not be as sexy as chasing doll sheep in Alaska, but there are a lot of animals right next door to you. People are having a tough time dealing with them, and you could establish some relationships that fill your freezer for many years to come. That’s all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening, and remember to write in to ask c Al that’s Ascal at the meat eater dot com. Let me know what’s going on in your neck of the woods. You know we appreciate it.
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